John O. Brennan, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency briefed Congress yesterday on the threats from ISIS facing the nation. Several vital points standout from Brennan’s testimony:
- ISIS has the ability to strike at global targets.
- ISIS is expanding its efforts to produce more assaults such as those seen in San Bernardino, Orlando, and Paris.
- ISIS will use refugees as a way of getting its fighters into the world’s nations.
- The turmoil in Egypt and Libya has opened the door for ISIS to expand dramatically in those nations.
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These salient points raise significant questions for the Obama Administration, including:
- Why did it help put into motion the events in Libya and Egypt that opened those nations up for turmoil?
- Why does the President insist on continuing his Syrian refugee program when it is being used by ISIS as a means to smuggle its fighters into America?
- Why are so few of the refugees admitted of Christian, Yazdi or Kurd background?
- Why does the President and his supporters insist on blaming incidents such as those which occurred in San Bernardino, Orlando, and Fort Hood on issues such as American gun ownership and his perception of internal bias?
Key excerpts from Brennan’s testimony:
Our hearing today takes place against the backdrop of a heinous act of wanton violence that was perpetrated against innocents in Orlando, Florida last weekend. … This act of violence was an assault on the values of openness and tolerance that define us as a Nation.
[Despite some losses] ISIL… is a formidable, resilient, and largely cohesive enemy, and we anticipate that the group will adjust its strategy and tactics in an effort to regain momentum.
In the coming months, we can expect ISIL to probe the front lines of its adversaries for weaknesses, to harass the forces that are holding the cities it previously controlled, and to conduct terror attacks against its enemies in Iraq and Syria. To compensate for territorial losses, ISIL will probably rely more on guerrilla tactics, including high-profile attacks outside territory it holds. A steady stream of attacks in Baghdad and Damascus demonstrates the group’s ability to penetrate deep inside enemy strongholds….Yet ISIL is adapting to the Coalition’s efforts, and it continues to generate at least tens of millions of dollars in revenue per month, primarily from taxation and from crude oil sales.
Unfortunately, despite all our progress against ISIL on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach. The resources needed for terrorism are very modest, and the group would have to suffer even heavier losses of territory, manpower, and money for its terrorist capacity to decline significantly. Moreover, the group’s foreign branches and global networks can help preserve its capacity for terrorism regardless of events in Iraq and Syria. In fact, as the pressure mounts on ISIL, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.
Since at least 2014, ISIL has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, resulting in hundreds of casualties. The most prominent examples are the attacks in Paris and Brussels, which we assess were directed by ISIL’s leadership. We judge that ISIL is training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks. ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West. And the group is probably exploring a variety of means for infiltrating operatives into the West, including refugee flows, smuggling routes, and legitimate methods of travel.
Further, as we have seen in Orlando, San Bernardino, and elsewhere, ISIL is attempting to inspire attacks by sympathizers who have no direct links to the group. Last month, for example, a senior ISIL figure publicly urged the group’s followers to conduct attacks in their home countries if they were unable to travel to Syria and Iraq. At the same time, ISIL is gradually cultivating its global network of branches into a more interconnected organization. The branch in Libya is probably the most developed and the most dangerous. We assess that it is trying to increase its influence in Africa and to plot attacks in the region and in Europe.
Meanwhile, ISIL’s Sinai branch has established itself as the most active and capable terrorist group in Egypt. The branch focuses its attacks on Egyptian military and government targets, but it has also targeted foreigners and tourists, as we saw with the downing of a Russian passenger jet last October…In sum, ISIL remains a formidable adversary, but the United States and our global partners have succeeded in putting the group on the defensive, forcing it to devote more time and energy to try to hold territory and to protect its vital infrastructure….
as I often tell young officers at CIA, I have never seen a time when our country faced such a wide variety of threats to our national security. Run your fingers along almost any portion of the map from the Asia Pacific to North Africa and you will quickly find a flashpoint with global implications. China is modernizing its military and extending its reach in the South China Sea. North Korea is expanding its nuclear weapons program. Russia is threatening its neighbors and aggressively reasserting itself on the global stage. And then there is the cyber domain, where states and sub-national actors are threatening financial systems, transportation networks, and organizations of every stripe, inside government and out.